After rambling about the grounds another hour or so, the party from Fairfield was ready to go, and they all found it restful to lean back in the comfortable car and spin back to the city.
“If you’re not too tired I think we might drive down Pennsylvania Avenue,” suggested Mrs. Littell. “Our guests haven’t seen the White House yet, have they?”
Neither Betty nor Libbie had, and as the car turned into the famous thoroughfare both girls sat up alertly so as not to miss a single sight of interest. Carter slowed down as they approached a high iron fence, and at the first glimpse of the white mansion separated from the fence and street by a wide stretch of lawn, Libbie shouted joyfully.
“The White House!”
“Well, you needn’t tell everybody,” cautioned Bobby. “Think of the weddings they’ve held in there, Libbie!”
“I imagine any one who has ever seen a picture of the White House recognizes it instantly,” said Betty, fearing a resumption of cousinly hostilities. “How beautiful the grounds are.”
“You must go through it some day soon,” said Mrs. Littell. “And now we’ll drive to the Capitol. Day after to-morrow would be a good time for you to take the girls to the Capitol, Bobby.”
The Capitol reminded Libbie of a pin tray she had at home, and awoke recollection in Betty’s mind of a bronze plaque that had been one of Mrs. Arnold’s treasures in the stiff little parlor of the Pineville house. All good Americans know the White House and the Capitol long before they make a pilgrimage to Washington.
On their arrival at Fairfields they found Mr. Littell playing solitaire, and something in his undisguised relief at seeing them made Betty wonder if time did not hang heavily on his hands.
After dinner Bobby proposed that they turn on the phonograph and have a little dance among themselves.
“Oh, that will be fine!” cried Betty.
“Then you can dance?”
“A little—mother taught me.”
So the girls danced and had a good time generally for an hour or more, with Mr. and Mrs. Littell looking on. Then Betty sank down on the arm of Mr. Littell’s chair.
“I’ve been thinking of something,” she half whispered. “Do you like to play checkers? If you do, I know how.”
Maybe Mr. Littell understood that she was doing it largely to keep him company. But he said nothing, and they played checkers for nearly two hours. Betty was a fairly good player and managed to land several victories.
“With a little more practice you’ll make a very good player,” declared Mr. Littell. “I appreciate your staying to play with a cripple like me,” he added gratefully. “Does your Uncle Dick play?”
“I don’t really know,” replied the girl, and now her face clouded for an instant. Oh, why didn’t she hear from Uncle Dick?
The next few days were filled with sightseeing trips. Betty was kept too busy to have much time to worry, which was fortunate, for no word came from her uncle and no word reached her from Bob Henderson. The Guerins and the Benders wrote to her, and each letter mentioned the fact that Bob had sent a postal from Washington, but that no later word had come from him.
“I met Peabody on the road yesterday,” ran a postscript to Norma Guerin’s letter, written by her doctor father. “He hinted darkly that Bob had done something that might land him in jail, but I couldn’t force out of him what fearful thing Bob had done. I hope the lad hasn’t been rash, for Peabody never forgives a wrong, real or fancied.”
Betty knew that the farmer’s action had to do with the unrecorded deed, but she did not feel that she should make any disclosures in that connection. Of Bob’s innocence she was sure, and time would certainly clear him of any implication.
The girls visited the Capitol, seeing the great bronze doors that are nineteen feet high and weight ten tons. Betty was fascinated by the eight panels, and studied them till the others threatened to leave her there over night and call for her in the morning. Then she consented to make the tour of the three buildings. But the historical paintings again held her spellbound. When she reached the Senate chamber, which was empty, except for a page or two, the Senate not being in session, she dropped into a gallery seat and tried to imagine the famous scenes enacted there. They spent the better part of a day at the Capitol, and saw practically everything in the buildings. They were so tired that night that Libbie went to sleep over her dessert, and Betty dreamed all night of defending the city with a shotgun from the great gilded dome. But she and Libbie agreed that they would not have missed it for anything.
CHAPTER XIX
AN UNEXPECTED MEETING
“That’s twice you’ve made a wrong play, Betty,” observed Mr. Littell. “What lies heavy on your mind this evening?”
Betty blushed, and attempted to put her mind more on the game. She was playing checkers with Mr. Littell, whose injured foot still kept him a prisoner most of the time, and she had played badly all the evening, she knew. Truth to tell, she was thinking about her uncle and wondering over and over why she did not hear from him.
After the rubber was played and the other girls who had been around the piano, singing, had gone out to get something to eat, for the maids had the evening off, Betty spoke to her host.
“I suppose you think I’m foolish,” she ventured; “but I am really worried about Uncle Dick now. He has never answered the telegram and the two letters I’ve written. His Philadelphia lawyer writes that he is waiting to hear from him. He seems to have dropped out of the world. Do you think he may be sick in some hospital and not able to communicate with us?”
“That’s a possibility,” admitted Mr. Littell soberly. “But I tell you honestly, Betty, and not simply to relieve your mind, that I consider it a very remote one. Business men, especially men who travel a great deal, as you tell me your uncle does, seldom are without somewhere on their person, their names and addresses, and directions about what is to be done in case of sickness or accident. I never travel without such a card. Ten to one, if your uncle were ill or injured, his lawyer would have been notified immediately.”
A weight of anxiety slipped from Betty’s heart, for she immediately recognized the sound common sense in this argument. Still, something else was troubling her.
“Don’t you think,” she began again bravely, “that I had better go to Pineville? The quarantine is lifted, I hear, and the Bensingers will take me in till I can hear from Uncle Dick. You and Mrs. Littell and the girls have been so lovely to me, but—but—” her voice trailed off.
Mr. Littell leaned back in his chair and lit a fresh cigar.
“Well, now of course,” he said slowly, “if you feel that you want to go to Pineville, we really have no right to say anything. But if I were you, I’d stay right here. Your uncle may be intending to come back to Washington. In any case, he will address his letter to you here. Of that much we are certain. You’ll hear more quickly if you don’t move about. Besides, there is that Henderson lad. I’m counting on making his acquaintance. He’s likely to bob up any day—though I didn’t mean to pun. If you want my advice, Betty, it is to stay here quietly with us and wait as patiently as you can. We like to have you, you know that. You’re not a stranger, but a friend.”
He went on to explain to her in his quiet, even, matter-of-fact way, that to the disturbed girl was inexpressibly soothing, his belief that her uncle was on an exploration trip for oil and might easily find a month’s accumulation of mail awaiting him on his return.
“It’s only here, in the heart of civilization, that we think we can’t live without four mails a day,” Mr. Littell concluded. “I’ve been out of touch with a post-office for three weeks at a time myself, and our sailors, you know, often go much longer without letters.”
On one particularly lovely morning the four girls, with Mrs. Littell, started off on the pleasant mission of seeing the White House. Betty’s and Libbie’s acquaintance with it was confined solely to the glimpses they had had from the street, but Louise and Bobby had attended several New Year’s recept
ions and had shaken hands with the President.
The party spent a delightful morning, visiting the famous East Room, admiring the full length portraits of George and Martha Washington, about which latter the story is told that Mrs. Dolly Madison cut it from its frame to save it from the approaching enemy in 1814. They were also fortunate to find a custodian taking sightseers through the other official apartments so that they saw more than the casual visitor does in one visit. They visited in turn, the Green Room, the Red Room, and the Blue Room, saw the state dining-room with its magnificent shining table about which it was easy to imagine famous guests seated, and enjoyed a peep into the conservatory at the end of the corridor. They did not go up to the executive offices on the second floor, knowing that probably a crowd was before them and that an opportunity to see the President on the streets of the city was likely to present itself.
“Well, I shouldn’t want to live there,” sighed Betty, as they came down the steps, “It is very grand and very stately, but not much like a home. I suppose, though, the private rooms of the President and his family are cozy, if one could see them.”
“Beyond a doubt,” agreed Mrs. Littell.
They lunched at one of the large hotels, and afterward Mrs. Littell had a club engagement. The girls, she announced, might spend the afternoon as they chose, and she would pick them all up at five o’clock with Carter and the car.
“Esther and I want to see ‘The Heart of June,’” announced Libbie, who found romance enough to satisfy her in the motion-pictures.
Louise was interested, too; but Betty had promised to take some papers for Mr. Littell and see that they reached an architect in one of the nearby office buildings. Bobby elected to go with her, and they decided that, that errand accomplished, they might do a little shopping and meet the others at the theater door at five o’clock.
“Mr. Waters won’t be in till three o’clock,” announced the freckle-faced office boy who met them in the outer office of the architect’s suite.
“Then we’ll have to come back,” decided Betty, glancing at her watch. “It is just two now.”
“You can leave anything with me,” said the boy politely. “I’ll see that he gets it as soon as he comes in.”
“Yes, do, Betty,” urged Bobby. “Dad would say it was all right to leave that envelope of papers. They’re not terribly important.”
“We can do our shopping and then come back,” insisted Betty, to the evident disgust of Bobby and the hardly less concealed impatience of the office boy.
“Why wouldn’t you leave ’em?” demanded Bobby, when they were once more in the street.
“Dad hasn’t any secret service stuff, I’m sure of that. Now we have to come all the way back here again, and that means hurrying through our shopping.”
“You needn’t come,” said Betty mildly. “Your father asked me to give those papers personally to Mr. Waters. He didn’t say they were important; I don’t know that they are. But if I say I am going to give an envelope personally to any one, I don’t intend to give that envelope to a third person if there’s nothing in it more valuable than—hair nets!”
The window they were passing suggested the comparison, and Bobby laughed good-naturedly and forebore to argue further. Promptly at three o’clock she and Betty entered the elevator in the office building and were whirled up to the fifth floor to find Mr. Waters in his private office.
“Mr. Littell telephoned half an hour ago,” he told them, taking the envelope and running over the papers with a practised eye as he talked. “He hoped to catch you before you left here. I believe he wants to speak to his daughter. There’s a booth right there, Miss Bobby.”
Bobby had a brief conversation with her father and came out in a few minutes in evident haste.
“He wants us to do a couple more errands, Betty,” she announced. “We’ll have to hurry, for it’s after three.”
The architect had written a receipt for the papers, and Bobby now hurried Betty off, explaining as they went that they must take a car to Octagon House.
Octagon House proved to be the headquarters for the American Institute of Architects, and Bobby’s errand had to do with one of the offices. Betty admired the fine woodwork and the handsome design of the house while waiting for her companion, and in less than fifteen minutes they were back on the street car bound for “the tallest office building in Washington,” as Bobby described it.
“Dad wants an architectural magazine that’s out of print, and he thinks I can get it there,” she said. “Afterward, if we have time, we’ll go to the top of the building. The root is arranged so that you can step out, and they say the view is really splendid. Not so extensive as from the Monument, of course, but not so reduced, either. I’ve always wanted to get up on the roof and see what I could see.”
Finding the office her father had specified did not prove as easy a task as Bobby had anticipated, and she said frankly that if she had been alone she would have given up and taken another day for the search.
“But if you can keep a promise down to the last dot of the last letter, far be it from me to fall short,” she remarked. “Oh, Betty, do you see any office that looks like Sherwood and David on this board?”
At last they found it under another name, which, as Bobby rather tactlessly told the elevator boy, was not her idea of efficiency. The copy of the magazine Mr. Littell especially wanted was wrapped up and placed safely in Bobby’s hands.
“And now,” declared that young person gaily, “as the reward of virtue, let’s go up on the roof. It is after four, but we’ll have time if we don’t dawdle. We can get from here to the theater in fifteen minutes.”
They started for the elevator, and as a car came up and the gates opened a boy got off. He would have brushed by without looking up, but Betty saw him at once.
“Bob!” she cried in amazement “Why, Bob Henderson!”
CHAPTER XX
MUTUAL CONFIDENCES
“Betty! Oh, Betty! _Betty!_” Bob Henderson’s familiar, friendly voice rose to a perfect crescendo of delight, and several passengers in the elevator smiled in sympathy.
Bobby Littell, who had entered the car, backed out hastily and the gate closed.
“Bobby, this is Bob Henderson,” Betty performed a hasty introduction. “And, Bob, this is Roberta Littell, always called Bobby.”
The latter held out an instant cordial hand to Bob.
“I know about you,” she proclaimed frankly. “Betty thinks you are fine. We ought to be good friends, because our names are almost alike.”
“I must talk to you, Bob,” said Betty hurriedly. “Where are you going? Have you heard from Bramble Farm or Uncle Dick? How long have you been in Washington? Did you get out to Oklahoma?”
Bobby laughed and touched Betty on the arm.
“There’s a seat over by the elevator,” she suggested. “Why don’t you sit there and talk? I’ll come back and get you at a quarter to five—I want to get some new hair-ribbons for Esther.”
“But you wanted to go up on the roof!” protested Betty, longing to talk to Bob and yet mindful of Bobby’s first plans.
“Plenty of other days for that,” was the careless response. “See you quarter to, remember. Good-by, Bob—though I’ll see you again, of course.”
She disappeared into a down elevator, and Betty and Bob sat down on the oak settle in the corridor.
“Wasn’t it lucky we met you!” exclaimed Betty, getting a good look at the boy for the first time. “Seems to me you’re thinner, Bob. Are you all right?”
“Couldn’t be better!” he assured her, but she noticed there were rings under his eyes and that his hands, white enough now in contrast to the tan which still showed at his wrists, were perceptibly thinner. “Fact is, I work in this building, Betty. Kind of junior clerk for a man on the fourth floor, substituting while his clerks are away on vacation. Hale got me the place.”
Betty told him of her interview with the old bookshop man, and Bob listened intently.
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“So that’s how you heard about Oklahoma,” he commented. “You could have knocked me down with a feather when you said it. I guess Hale forgot I was working here—he really is dreadfully absent-minded—or else he thought you weren’t to be trusted with so important a secret. He’s as queer as they make ’em, but he was very good to me; couldn’t seem to take enough pains to trace out what he knew of my mother’s people.”
Bob went on to explain that his money had given out and that he had to work in order to get together enough to pay his fare out to the West and also to board himself and pay for some new clothes. Betty guessed that he was scrimping closely to save his wages, though she did not then suspect what she afterward learned to be true, that he was trying to live on two meals a day, and those none too bountiful. Bob had a healthy boy’s appetite, and it took determination for him to go without the extra meal, but he had the grit to stick it out.
“When Bobby comes back you must go with us and meet Mrs. Littell,” observed Betty. “She’ll want to take you home to dinner. Oh, Bob, they are the loveliest people!”
Bob shifted his foot so that the patch on one shoe was hidden.
“I’ll go with you to meet her on one condition,” he said firmly. “I won’t go to dinner anywhere tonight—that’s flat, Betty. My collar isn’t clean. And who are the Littells?”
That led to long explanations, of course, and Betty told in detail how she had left Bramble Farm, of the mix-up at the Union Station, and her subsequent friendship with the hospitable family. She also told him of Mr. Gordon’s sudden trip to Oklahoma and his almost inexplicable silence, but kept to herself her worry over this silence and as to her own future if it continued. She gave him the latest news of the Benders and the Guerins and handed over the two letters from these friends she happened to have in her purse that he might read and enjoy them at his leisure. In short, Betty poured out much of the pent-up excitement and doubt and conjecture of the last few weeks to Bob, who was as hungry to hear as she was to tell it.
“They certainly are fine to you!” he exclaimed, referring to the Littells. “There isn’t another family in Washington, probably, who would have been as kind to you. I think you’ll hear from your uncle soon, Betty. Lots of times these oil wells, you know, are miles from a railroad or a post-office. You take that Mr. Littell’s advice—he sounds as if he had a heap of common sense. And whatever they’ve done to you, you’re looking great, Betty. Pretty, and stylish and—and different, somehow.”
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